1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an object detection apparatus and an object detection method, in particular, to a technique for detecting an object in an image captured by a camera or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, installation of monitoring cameras for security reasons has been rapidly spreading. An apparatus which automatically detects an intrusion of a suspicious person or object by using such monitoring cameras is known. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-284501 discusses an intrusion monitoring imaging apparatus which extracts feature data, such as an area, a moving direction and moving speed, of an object which is captured in a monitoring area of the apparatus and compares the extracted feature data with preliminary stored feature data of intruders. When these feature data match with each other, the apparatus identifies the object as an intruder and raises an alarm. Further, the apparatus captures the object in the monitoring area by using a difference between a processing image and a background.
In addition, there is a demand for the above described monitoring in a broad area in detail. In this case, a plurality of monitoring cameras may be used to monitor a broad area in detail. However, installation of the plurality of monitoring cameras creates a problem of high cost and detection results obtained by the plurality of monitoring cameras must be managed in a collective manner. In order to solve these problems, a monitoring camera which includes a high resolution image sensor and a wide field imaging lens may be used. However, an amount of data to be processed in this method may become enormous, so that the object cannot be detected within a predetermined time.